Abstract FOSS distributions are increasingly over pressure to deliver stable releases including the most up to date upstream software. Time-based release strategies has exacerbated this problem putting even more pressure on QA teams. The recently concluded Mancoosi project has developed a number of tools to automatically analyse large packages collections for a range of problems, from installability checks to speculative analysis of software repositories. In this talk I'll present four command line tools to identify and correct potential problems as soon as possible during the release cycle. In particular :

• Debcheck: This tools helps to identify all broken packages within a repository and provides a detailed explanation of the problem. This can be used to prevent shipping releases that contain packages that cannot be installed because of missing or malformed dependencies.
• Buildcheck: Given a Sources file and a set of binary repositories, this tool identifies those source packages that cannot be compiled because their build dependencies cannot be satisfied.
• Outdated: This tool identifies those broken packages that need special attention because of outdated meta-data.
• Challenged: This tool performs a speculative analysis of the repository to identify those packages that, if upgraded to a specific version, would break a large number of other packages in the repository. This tool would be particularly useful during the upgrade of a specific component to evaluate its impact on the software archive.

Most of our tools support both rpm (version 4 and 5) and deb based distributions. The mancoosi team.

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• If you're using C, you likely deal with all characters as raw bytes, and rely on the backwards compatability built into UTF-8, or you go to long lengths to manually deal with wide characters, so you can intelligently manipulate strings. The transition has barely begin, and will, apparently, never end.
• If you're using perl (at least like I do in ikiwiki), everything is (probably) unicode internally, but every time you call a library or do IO you have to manually deal with conversions, that are generally not even documented. You constantly find new encoding bugs. (If you're lucky, you don't find outright language bugs... I have.) You're at a very uncomfortable midpoint of the transition.
• If you're using haskell, or probably lots of other languages like python and ruby, everything is unicode all the time.. except for when it's not.
• If you're using javascript, the transition is basically complete.

1. The input filename is assumed to be in the system encoding aka unicode. What if it cannot be validly interpreted in that encoding? Probably your rm throws an exception.
2. Once the FilePath is loaded, it's been decoded to unicode characters. In order to call unlink, these have to be re-encoded to get a filename. Will that be the same bytes as the input filename and the filename on disk? Possibly not, and then the rm will delete the wrong thing, or fail.

class ShardedSessionShardId(ShardedSession):
    def __init__(self, *args, **kwargs):
        super(ShardedSessionShardId, self).__init__(*args, **kwargs)
        self._query_cls = ShardedQueryShardId
class ShardedQueryShardId(ShardedQuery):
    def _execute_and_instances(self, context):
        if self._shard_id is not None:
            result = self.session.connection(
                            mapper=self._mapper_zero(),
                            shard_id=self._shard_id).execute(context.statement, self._params)
            news = list(self.instances(result, context))
            for new in news:
                new.shard_id = self._shard_id
            return iter(news)
        else:
            partial = []
            for shard_id in self.query_chooser(self):
                result = self.session.connection(
                            mapper=self._mapper_zero(),
                            shard_id=shard_id).execute(context.statement, self._params)
                news = list(self.instances(result, context))
                for new in news:
                    new.shard_id = shard_id
                partial = partial + news
            # if some kind of in memory 'sorting'
            # were done, this is where it would happen
            return iter(partial)
create_session = sessionmaker(class_=ShardedSessionShardId)

class WeakInstanceDictNoIdentity(WeakInstanceDict):
    def add(self, state):
        # if state.key in self:
        #     if dict.__getitem__(self, state.key) is not state:
        #         raise AssertionError("A conflicting state is already "
        #                             "present in the identity map for key %r"
        #                             % (state.key, ))
        # else:
            dict.__setitem__(self, state.key, state)
            self._manage_incoming_state(state)
class ShardedSessionShardId(ShardedSession):
    def __init__(self, *args, **kwargs):
        super(ShardedSessionShardId, self).__init__(*args, **kwargs)
        self._query_cls = ShardedQueryShardId
        self._identity_cls = WeakInstanceDictNoIdentity
        self.identity_map = self._identity_cls()

class MapperNoIdentity(Mapper):
    def _instance_processor(self, context, path, adapter,
                                polymorphic_from=None, extension=None,
                                only_load_props=None, refresh_state=None,
                                polymorphic_discriminator=None):
        """Produce a mapper level row processor callable
           which processes rows into mapped instances."""
        pk_cols = self.primary_key
        if polymorphic_from or refresh_state:
            polymorphic_on = None
        else:
            if polymorphic_discriminator is not None:
                polymorphic_on = polymorphic_discriminator
            else:
                polymorphic_on = self.polymorphic_on
            polymorphic_instances = util.PopulateDict(
                                        self._configure_subclass_mapper(
                                                context, path, adapter)
                                        )
        version_id_col = self.version_id_col
        if adapter:
            pk_cols = [adapter.columns[c] for c in pk_cols]
            if polymorphic_on is not None:
                polymorphic_on = adapter.columns[polymorphic_on]
            if version_id_col is not None:
                version_id_col = adapter.columns[version_id_col]
        identity_class = self._identity_class
        def identity_key(row):
            return identity_class, tuple([row[column] for column in pk_cols])
        new_populators = []
        existing_populators = []
        load_path = context.query._current_path + path
        def populate_state(state, dict_, row, isnew, only_load_props):
            if isnew:
                if context.propagate_options:
                    state.load_options = context.propagate_options
                if state.load_options:
                    state.load_path = load_path
            if not new_populators:
                new_populators[:], existing_populators[:] = \
                                    self._populators(context, path, row,
                                                        adapter)
            if isnew:
                populators = new_populators
            else:
                populators = existing_populators
            if only_load_props:
                populators = [p for p in populators
                                if p[0] in only_load_props]
            for key, populator in populators:
                populator(state, dict_, row)
        session_identity_map = context.session.identity_map
        if not extension:
            extension = self.extension
        translate_row = extension.get('translate_row', None)
        create_instance = extension.get('create_instance', None)
        populate_instance = extension.get('populate_instance', None)
        append_result = extension.get('append_result', None)
        populate_existing = context.populate_existing or self.always_refresh
        if self.allow_partial_pks:
            is_not_primary_key = _none_set.issuperset
        else:
            is_not_primary_key = _none_set.issubset
        def _instance(row, result):
            if translate_row:
                ret = translate_row(self, context, row)
                if ret is not EXT_CONTINUE:
                    row = ret
            if polymorphic_on is not None:
                discriminator = row[polymorphic_on]
                if discriminator is not None:
                    _instance = polymorphic_instances[discriminator]
                    if _instance:
                        return _instance(row, result)
            # determine identity key
            if refresh_state:
                identitykey = refresh_state.key
                if identitykey is None:
                    # super-rare condition; a refresh is being called
                    # on a non-instance-key instance; this is meant to only
                    # occur within a flush()
                    identitykey = self._identity_key_from_state(refresh_state)
            else:
                identitykey = identity_key(row)
            # instance = session_identity_map.get(identitykey)
            # if instance is not None:
            #     state = attributes.instance_state(instance)
            #     dict_ = attributes.instance_dict(instance)
            #     isnew = state.runid != context.runid
            #     currentload = not isnew
            #     loaded_instance = False
            #     if not currentload and \
            #             version_id_col is not None and \
            #             context.version_check and \
            #             self._get_state_attr_by_column(
            #                     state,
            #                     dict_,
            #                     self.version_id_col) != \
            #                             row[version_id_col]:
            #         raise orm_exc.ConcurrentModificationError(
            #                 "Instance '%s' version of %s does not match %s"
            #                 % (state_str(state),
            #                     self._get_state_attr_by_column(
            #                                 state, dict_,
            #                                 self.version_id_col),
            #                         row[version_id_col]))
            # elif refresh_state:
            if refresh_state:
                # out of band refresh_state detected (i.e. its not in the
                # session.identity_map) honor it anyway.  this can happen
                # if a _get() occurs within save_obj(), such as
                # when eager_defaults is True.
                state = refresh_state
                instance = state.obj()
                dict_ = attributes.instance_dict(instance)
                isnew = state.runid != context.runid
                currentload = True
                loaded_instance = False
            else:
                # check for non-NULL values in the primary key columns,
                # else no entity is returned for the row
                if is_not_primary_key(identitykey[1]):
                    return None
                isnew = True
                currentload = True
                loaded_instance = True
                if create_instance:
                    instance = create_instance(self,
                                                context,
                                                row, self.class_)
                    if instance is EXT_CONTINUE:
                        instance = self.class_manager.new_instance()
                    else:
                        manager = attributes.manager_of_class(
                                                instance.__class__)
                        # TODO: if manager is None, raise a friendly error
                        # about returning instances of unmapped types
                        manager.setup_instance(instance)
                else:
                    instance = self.class_manager.new_instance()
                dict_ = attributes.instance_dict(instance)
                state = attributes.instance_state(instance)
                state.key = identitykey
                # manually adding instance to session.  for a complete add,
                # session._finalize_loaded() must be called.
                state.session_id = context.session.hash_key
                session_identity_map.add(state)
            if currentload or populate_existing:
                if isnew:
                    state.runid = context.runid
                    context.progress[state] = dict_
                if not populate_instance or \
                        populate_instance(self, context, row, instance,
                            only_load_props=only_load_props,
                            instancekey=identitykey, isnew=isnew) is \
                            EXT_CONTINUE:
                    populate_state(state, dict_, row, isnew, only_load_props)
            else:
                # populate attributes on non-loading instances which have
                # been expired
                # TODO: apply eager loads to un-lazy loaded collections ?
                if state in context.partials or state.unloaded:
                    if state in context.partials:
                        isnew = False
                        (d_, attrs) = context.partials[state]
                    else:
                        isnew = True
                        attrs = state.unloaded
                        # allow query.instances to commit the subset of attrs
                        context.partials[state] = (dict_, attrs)
                    if not populate_instance or \
                            populate_instance(self, context, row, instance,
                                only_load_props=attrs,
                                instancekey=identitykey, isnew=isnew) is \
                                EXT_CONTINUE:
                        populate_state(state, dict_, row, isnew, attrs)
            if loaded_instance:
                state._run_on_load(instance)
            if result is not None and \
                        (not append_result or
                            append_result(self, context, row, instance,
                                    result, instancekey=identitykey,
                                    isnew=isnew)
                                    is EXT_CONTINUE):
                result.append(instance)
            return instance
        return _instance

_none_set = frozenset([None])
_runid = 1L
_id_lock = util.threading.Lock()
def _new_runid():
    global _runid
    _id_lock.acquire()
    try:
        _runid += 1
        return _runid
    finally:
        _id_lock.release()

def query_chooser(query):
    try:
        return query.shards
    except AttributeError:
        pass
    return tcs.keys()

cygwin_path = c:\cygwin\bin

echo = $(cygwin_path)\echo.exe
grep = $(cygwin_path)\grep.exe

#testpath = ..\..\rel\test\path
#testpath = rel\test\path
#testpath = \abs\test\path
testpath = c:\abs\test\path

!if  ([ $(echo) '$(testpath)'   $(grep) -q -E '^^(\w:)?\\\\' ] == 0)
type = abs
!else
type = rel
!endif

test:
   @$(echo) "testpath = $(testpath)"
   @$(echo) "type     = $(type)"

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class users  
    users::add   "foo":
        username        => 'foo',
        comment         => 'Foo's Full Name',
        shell           => '/bin/bash',
        password_hash   => 'pwd_hash_as_you_can_see_in_/etc/shadow'
     
define users::add($username, $comment, $shell, $password_hash)  
    user   $username:
        ensure => 'present',
        home   => "/home/$ username ",
        comment => $comment,
        shell  => $shell,
        managehome => 'true',
        password => $password_hash,
     
   
 

class sudoers  
file   "/etc/sudoers":
      owner   => "root",
      group   => "root",
      mode    => "440",
      
 
augeas   "addfootosudoers":
  context => "/files/etc/sudoers",
  changes => [
    "set spec[user = 'foo']/user foo",
    "set spec[user = 'foo']/host_group/host ALL",
    "set spec[user = 'foo']/host_group/command ALL",
    "set spec[user = 'foo']/host_group/command/runas_user ALL",
  ],
 

class openssh-server  
  package   "openssh-server":
      ensure => "installed",
   
    service   "ssh":
        ensure    => running,
        hasstatus => true,
        require   => Package["openssh-server"],
     
augeas   "sshd_config":
  context => "/files/etc/ssh/sshd_config",
    changes => [
    "set PermitRootLogin no",
    "set RSAAuthentication yes",
    "set PubkeyAuthentication yes",
    "set AuthorizedKeysFile	%h/.ssh/authorized_keys",
    "set PasswordAuthentication no",
    "set Port 222",
  ],
  
 

<% if environment == "production" %>
-A INPUT -m state --state NEW -m tcp -p tcp --dport 22 -j ACCEPT
-A INPUT -m state --state NEW -m tcp -p tcp --dport 25 -j ACCEPT
-A INPUT -m state --state NEW -m tcp -p tcp --dport 80 -j ACCEPT
<% unless defined?(staging).nil? %>
-A INPUT -s X.X.X.X -j REJECT --reject-with icmp-host-prohibited
<% end -%>
# Allow unlimited traffic on eth0
-A INPUT -i eth0 -j ACCEPT
-A OUTPUT -o eth0 -j ACCEPT
# Allow unlimited traffic from trusted IP addresses
-A INPUT -s 192.168.1.1/24 -j ACCEPT
<% end -%>

class iptables  
    package   iptables:
        ensure => installed;
     
    service   "iptables":
        ensure    => running,
        hasstatus => true,
        require   => Package["iptables"],
     
    file   "/etc/sysconfig/iptables":
        owner   => "root",
        group   => "root",
        mode    => 644,
        content => template("iptables/iptables.erb"),
        notify  => Service["iptables"],
     
 

• the software that are specific to Debian (debian-installer, dpkg, APT, etc.) (*);
• the Debconf prompts in all Debian packages (*);
• the Debian documentation (*);
• the Debian website;
• the Debian wiki;
• the descriptions of packages.

# SOME DESCRIPTIVE TITLE.
# Copyright (C) YEAR Software in the Public Interest, Inc.
# This file is distributed under the same license as the PACKAGE package.
# FIRST AUTHOR <email>, YEAR.
#
#, fuzzy
msgid ""
msgstr ""
"Project-Id-Version: dpkg 1.16.1\n"
"Report-Msgid-Bugs-To: debian-dpkg@lists.debian.org\n"
"POT-Creation-Date: 2011-09-23 03:37+0200\n"
"PO-Revision-Date: YEAR-MO-DA HO:MI+ZONE\n"
"Last-Translator: FULL NAME <email>\n"
"Language-Team: LANGUAGE <ll>\n"
"Language: \n"
"MIME-Version: 1.0\n"
"Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8\n"
"Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit\n"
"Plural-Forms: nplurals=INTEGER; plural=EXPRESSION;\n"
#: lib/dpkg/ar.c:66
#, c-format
msgid "invalid character '%c' in archive '%.250s' member '%.16s' size"
msgstr ""
#: lib/dpkg/ar.c:81 lib/dpkg/ar.c:97 lib/dpkg/ar.c:108 lib/dpkg/ar.c:112
#: lib/dpkg/ar.c:134 utils/update-alternatives.c:1154
#, c-format
msgid "unable to write file '%s'"
msgstr ""
[ ]

# translation of fr.po to French
# Messages fran ais pour dpkg (Linux-GNU Debian).
msgid ""
msgstr ""
"Project-Id-Version: fr\n"
"Report-Msgid-Bugs-To: debian-dpkg@lists.debian.org\n"
"POT-Creation-Date: 2011-09-23 03:37+0200\n"
"PO-Revision-Date: 2012-01-16 07:57+0100\n"
"Last-Translator: Christian Perrier <bubulle>\n"
"Language-Team: French <debian-l10n-french>\n"
"Language: fr\n"
"MIME-Version: 1.0\n"
"Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8\n"
"Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit\n"
"Plural-Forms: Plural-Forms: nplurals=2; plural=n>1;\n"
"X-Generator: Lokalize 1.2\n"
#: lib/dpkg/ar.c:66
#, c-format
msgid "invalid character '%c' in archive '%.250s' member '%.16s' size"
msgstr "caract re invalide  %1$c  dans la taille du membre  %3$.16s  de l'archive  %2$.250s "
#: lib/dpkg/ar.c:81 lib/dpkg/ar.c:97 lib/dpkg/ar.c:108 lib/dpkg/ar.c:112
#: lib/dpkg/ar.c:134 utils/update-alternatives.c:1154
#, c-format
msgid "unable to write file '%s'"
msgstr "impossible d' crire le fichier  %s "
[ ]

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from sunlight import capitolwords
from sunlight import congress
for person in capitolwords.phrases_by_entity(
    "legislator",
    phrase="free market",
    sort="count",
):
    n = congress.legislators( bioguide_id=person['legislator'],
        all_legislators="true" )
    if len(n) >= 1:
        n = n[0]
        if n['twitter_id'] != "":
            print n['twitter_id']

RepRonPaul
stevekingia
SenSherrodBrown
JacksonLeeTX18
SenatorLeahy
ChuckGrassley
SenJohnMcCain
OrrinHatch
DanaRohrabacher
JudgeTedPoe
McConnellPress
edtowns
SenatorDurbin
SenatorSessions
SenatorHarkin
SenChrisDodd
russfeingold
RosLehtinen
sencarllevin
senjonkyl
Dennis_Kucinich
senatorsanders
SenatorReid
RepDanBurton
RepMikePence
SenSamBrownback
joebiden
FrankPallone
ToddAkin
senatorboxer
RepTrentFranks
JohnCornyn

Broken xserver-xorg-core:i386 Breaks on xserver-xorg-video-6 [ i386 ] < none > ( none )

Investigating (0) xserver-xorg-core [ i386 ] < 2:1.7.6-2ubuntu7.10 -> 2:1.11.3-0ubuntu8 > ( x11 )
  Fixing xserver-xorg-core:i386 via remove of xserver-xorg-video-tseng:i386
Investigating (1) xserver-xorg-core [ i386 ] < 2:1.7.6-2ubuntu7.10 -> 2:1.11.3-0ubuntu8 > ( x11 )
  Fixing xserver-xorg-core:i386 via remove of xserver-xorg-video-i740:i386
Investigating (2) xserver-xorg-core [ i386 ] < 2:1.7.6-2ubuntu7.10 -> 2:1.11.3-0ubuntu8 > ( x11 )
  Fixing xserver-xorg-core:i386 via remove of xserver-xorg-video-nv:i386

Investigating (8) dpkg [ i386 ] < 1.15.5.6ubuntu4.5 -> 1.16.1.2ubuntu5 > ( admin )
Broken dpkg:i386 Breaks on dpkg-dev [ i386 ] < 1.15.5.6ubuntu4.5 -> 1.16.1.2ubuntu5 > ( utils ) (< 1.15.8)
  Considering dpkg-dev:i386 29 as a solution to dpkg:i386 7205
  Upgrading dpkg-dev:i386 due to Breaks field in dpkg:i386
Investigating (8) dpkg-dev [ i386 ] < 1.15.5.6ubuntu4.5 -> 1.16.1.2ubuntu5 > ( utils )
Broken dpkg-dev:i386 Depends on libdpkg-perl [ i386 ] < none -> 1.16.1.2ubuntu5 > ( perl ) (= 1.16.1.2ubuntu5)
  Considering libdpkg-perl:i386 12 as a solution to dpkg-dev:i386 29
  Holding Back dpkg-dev:i386 rather than change libdpkg-perl:i386
Investigating (9) dpkg [ i386 ] < 1.15.5.6ubuntu4.5 -> 1.16.1.2ubuntu5 > ( admin )
Broken dpkg:i386 Breaks on dpkg-dev [ i386 ] < 1.15.5.6ubuntu4.5 -> 1.16.1.2ubuntu5 > ( utils ) (< 1.15.8)
  Considering dpkg-dev:i386 29 as a solution to dpkg:i386 7205
  Upgrading dpkg-dev:i386 due to Breaks field in dpkg:i386
Investigating (9) dpkg-dev [ i386 ] < 1.15.5.6ubuntu4.5 -> 1.16.1.2ubuntu5 > ( utils )
Broken dpkg-dev:i386 Depends on libdpkg-perl [ i386 ] < none -> 1.16.1.2ubuntu5 > ( perl ) (= 1.16.1.2ubuntu5)
  Considering libdpkg-perl:i386 12 as a solution to dpkg-dev:i386 29
  Holding Back dpkg-dev:i386 rather than change libdpkg-perl:i386

Investigating (1) libdpkg-perl [ i386 ] < none -> 1.16.1.2ubuntu5 > ( perl )
Broken libdpkg-perl:i386 Depends on perl [ i386 ] < 5.10.1-8ubuntu2.1 -> 5.14.2-6ubuntu1 > ( perl )
  Considering perl:i386 1472 as a solution to libdpkg-perl:i386 12
  Holding Back libdpkg-perl:i386 rather than change perl:i386

Investigating (1) perl [ i386 ] < 5.10.1-8ubuntu2.1 -> 5.14.2-6ubuntu1 > ( perl )
Broken perl:i386 Depends on perl-base [ i386 ] < 5.10.1-8ubuntu2.1 -> 5.14.2-6ubuntu1 > ( perl ) (= 5.14.2-6ubuntu1)
  Considering perl-base:i386 5806 as a solution to perl:i386 1472
  Removing perl:i386 rather than change perl-base:i386

Investigating (1) perl-base [ i386 ] < 5.10.1-8ubuntu2.1 -> 5.14.2-6ubuntu1 > ( perl )
Broken perl-base:i386 PreDepends on libc6 [ i386 ] < 2.11.1-0ubuntu7.8 -> 2.13-24ubuntu2 > ( libs ) (>= 2.11)
  Considering libc6:i386 -17473 as a solution to perl-base:i386 5806
  Added libc6:i386 to the remove list

Investigating (0) libc6 [ i386 ] < 2.11.1-0ubuntu7.8 -> 2.13-24ubuntu2 > ( libs )
Broken libc6:i386 Depends on libc-bin [ i386 ] < 2.11.1-0ubuntu7.8 -> 2.13-24ubuntu2 > ( libs ) (= 2.11.1-0ubuntu7.8)
  Considering libc-bin:i386 10358 as a solution to libc6:i386 -17473
  Removing libc6:i386 rather than change libc-bin:i386

         Scores[I->ID] += abs(OldScores[D.ParentPkg()->ID]);

Programs, unlike spoken sentences and unlike most books and magazines, are likely to be changed over time. It's typically not enough to produce code that operates effectively and is readily understood by other persons; one must also organize the code so that it is easy to modify. There may be ten ways to write code for some task T. Of those ten ways, seven will be awkward, inefficient, or puzzling. Of the other three, which is most likely to be similar to the code needed for the task T in next year's software release?

1. Do a local build of the package and then generate an initial symbols template for that architecture. So, for example, I did:

       fakeroot debian/rules build install
       pkgkde-gensymbols -plibxml-security-c16 -v1.6.1 -Osymbols.i386 \
           -edebian/libxml-security-c16/usr/lib/*/libxml-security-c.so.*.*
       pkgkde-symbolshelper create -o debian/libxml-security-c16.symbols \
           -v 1.6.1 symbols.i386
   

   This generates an initial symbols file that will work for i386.
2. Build and upload this version of the package. Now wait for all the buildds to fail (because they will, on probably nearly every other architecture than your local one).
3. Download all of the build logs and feed them back into pkgkde-symbolshelper so that it can adjust your symbols template for all of the architecture variations. So, for example, I did:

       pkgkde-getbuildlogs
       pkgkde-symbolshelper batchpatch -v 1.6.1 *_unstable_logs/*.build
   

   This will generate rather nice annotated symbols files with appropriate arch lists and using subst tags where appropriately (such as when an argument to a function is a size_t).
4. Modify your package to use pkg-kde-tools during the build, because subst tags are a really nice way to handle a lot of C++ symbol patterns but #533916 against dpkg-dev is wontfix, so you need the pkg-kde-tools replacement for dpkg-gensymbols. I added a dependency on pkg-kde-tools and then added the (undocumented) pkgkde_symbolshelper add-on to my dh --with flag.
5. Build and upload the package again. Now it will hopefully build on all architectures.

1. It feels like this symbols file is still likely to be fragile. While pkg-kde-tools detects a lot of template instances and marks them optional, I was still seeing a lot of "leaked" symbols from other C++ libraries that my package build-depends on, and which I suspect may also disappear. There's also the problem of optimizers eliminating some things that are inlined; for example, that appears to be the variation that my package sees on arm. And for a substantial C++ library, the symbols file is HUGE. Over 12,000 lines for one of my libraries. It's kind of scary to think of how many fragility landmines are buried under there.
2. By the nature of this process, it's very sensitive to the current supported architectures. I expect any package with a symbols template built this way stands a good chance of FTBFS on a new architecture. For example, my symbols file has a lot of !armel !armhf patterns, which don't appear to be anything unique to arm except that the C++ compiler behaves slightly differently there due to inlining, and those are the only two architectures in the current set with that pattern.
3. The lack of dpkg-gensymbols support for subst is very unfortunate, since it's used by the pkg-kde-tools utilities and it's the Right Thing To Do for symbols that take, for example, size_t as an argument. I would strongly encourage the dpkg maintainers to accept the work in #533916 except maybe for the vt work, since the alternative is to generate regexes that are significantly worse at capturing mistakes (since they're going to accept either int or long, rather than only whatever one corresponds to size_t, for example), or to embed a lot of specific architecture restrictions listing, for instance, all 64-bit architectures and guarantee FTBFS for every new architecture.
4. It's a little hard on the infrastructure, since adding a symbols file requires uploading a package that's guaranteed to fail to build almost everywhere just so that you can get all the build logs to feed into the machinery. I always feel guilty about doing that.
5. It's still not clear that the benefit is worth the amount of effort, since I expect most C++ libraries to require frequent SONAME changes anyway, which means that the long-term binary compatibility angle of symbols is probably futile. Mostly, all of this is to give you a tool to do ABI checking, which will catch some mistakes but not all of them. And I'm guessing it's going to be substantially more work than maintaining symbols for a C library if one actually does it properly and checks every missing symbol and change in new builds.

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Proving [ ] that a team was the best way to maintain large package sets changed the way people work on Debian.

Our huge bug backlog will never be dealt with.

1. General lack of configurability
2. Strange design decisions
3. Red Hat centric development
4. Hardware requirements
5. Change resistance

On the whole we don t intend to diverge from the upstream design, on which a lot of good work has been done.

In all cases, I would recommend to actually try GNOME Shell for a few hours before ditching it.

3 years [of support] is really not enough for corporate users.

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    PROC *new;
 
    if (!(new = malloc(sizeof(PROC))))  
        perror("malloc");
        exit(1);
     
    strcpy(new->comm, comm);

#6  new_proc (comm=0x6111b0 " console-kit-dae ", pid=1571, uid=0)
  at pstree.c:267

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